Drought peeling back time by exposing dugout canoes

Matthew West has a knack for finding historic items in the region dotted with lakes near Melrose — but nothing like the discovery he made in March.

By Nathan CrabbeStaff writer

PUTNAM HALL - Matthew West has a knack for finding historic items in the region dotted with lakes near Melrose — but nothing like the discovery he made in March.

West, 15, previously had found items such as medicine bottles and turpentine pots dating back perhaps a century. But he knew he had found something older and more significant when he saw wood peeking through a dried lake bed. His family has a photo of an Indian dugout canoe in their home, which matched what he saw through a crack in the mud.

A Florida Museum of Natural History staff member who lives nearby confirmed the discovery and then proceeded to find another dugout canoe several yards away in the same lake bed.

“Everything else I find from this point on is not going to compare to finding an Indian canoe,” West said.

The discovery is significant — but no longer rare. A class of Eastside High School students caused a sensation in 2000 when the students found dugout canoes in a dried part of Newnan's Lake. Eventually, 101 canoes were uncovered ranging from 500 to more than 5,000 years old, the largest discovery of its kind in North America. The canoes are now part of a museum exhibit.

As drought conditions have caused other lakes to dry in recent months, dozens of smaller discoveries are being made throughout the area.

“With the drought, it's getting harder and harder to keep up,” said Donna Ruhl, an archaeobotanist and North Florida archaeology collections manager with the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Ruhl visited the lake where West discovered the canoe last week with a crew of assistants from the museum and the University of Florida. They dug dirt from around the second canoe found there, recorded information on it and took a wood sample. The sample will show the type of wood, typically pine or cypress, and the age of the vessel.

“There's no way to tell by just looking at them,” Ruhl said. “They've been similar in their forms through the last 5,000 to 7,000 years.”

The canoe measured about 19 feet, which Ruhl said was an average size. She said the canoe was in relatively good condition compared with others, but its recent exposure to the elements was taking a toll. One side had started cracking, a victim of bacteria and sunlight.

After measurements were taken, the canoe was covered again in muck to help keep it preserved. Ruhl said there's no money available to preserve the canoe and others like it. Even if there were funding, she said, the canoes typically are not preserved enough to remove.

“It's not as simple as taking it out and letting it dry, because that's going to just create a pile of sawdust,” she said.

There are other reasons those finding the canoes shouldn't remove them, Ruhl said. Lake beds are technically state property, even when dried, so removing artifacts from them is against the law. She recommends leaving the discoveries in place and notifying law enforcement or calling the museum.

“Most everybody wants to be a really good steward and understands what that means to protect cultural resources,” she said.

Even with all of the discoveries, the canoes still are shrouded in mystery. The scale of the Newnan's discovery has led researchers to hypothesize that it was a place for making canoes. Theories about other canoes include them being submerged in places where Indians stopped on their travels or simply sunk them due to damage.

“There are as many hypotheses as people can think of,” Ruhl said.

Contact staff reporter Nathan Crabbe at 338-3176 or nathan.crabbe@gvillesun.com. For more stories on the University of Florida, visit www.thecampussun.com.